PESHAWAR, Aug 7: A two-day exhibition aimed at promoting defence products, sporting and vintage light arms manufactured in the tribal town of Darra Adamkhel failed to attract visitors on the first day of its commencement at the PCSIR laboratories here on Thursday.

A variety of short and double barrel guns and pistols manufactured in the historical arms manufacturing town of Darra Adamkhel have been put at display in the exhibition organized by the NWFP-chapter of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (Smeda).

In addition to arms manufactured in Darra Adamkhel, defence equipment manufactured by the arms manufacturing units set up in the settled areas of the country, including parts of Al-Khalid tank and light engineering machines, were also put on display in the exhibition involving a total of 22 stalls.

The idea to organize the exhibition, entitled “Defence Equipment Exhibition” has been conceived from the Idea 2000 defence exhibition arranged in Karachi for the last two consecutive years.

The poor response received by the exhibition on its first day has been attributed to the hasty decision on the part of the federal authorities to hold the exhibition.

“Only seven days were given to make arrangements for the exhibition,” said an organizer of the event.

He said that the show failed to receive respectable number of visitors on its first day because “it has been put together in haste on the instructions of the Federal Minister for Industries and Production, Liaqat Ali Jatoi, who wanted to hold the event at the earliest”.

The decision to hold the exhibition in the lawns of the PCSIR laboratories on a humid day of August also kept the general public away.

The organizers could not manage to invite foreign buyers to attend the exhibition because of the time constraints and haste.

However, Mohammad Shoaib, president of the Sarhad Sporting and Arms Manufacturing Association, Darra Adamkhel — an arms dealer — hoped that the exhibition would yield the desired results of promoting the locally made weapons particularly sporting and vintage guns.

The exhibition, said a representative of Smeda, was aimed to strengthen the network between defence manufacturing organizations and arms vendors from Darra Adamkhel by bringing them to limelight.

Mr Jatoi could not make it to the exhibition on Thursday due to his engagements at Islamabad and the organizers had to make it a two-day event from the originally conceived idea of holding a one-day show.

Mr Jatoi is now scheduled to visit the exhibition on Friday when he would also preside over a seminar on defence manufacturing sector at the PCSIR here.

Even at 1:00 pm on Thursday the organizers had not been able to finalize the exhibition’s arrangements as some of the exhibitors from Darra Adamkhel were not given clearance by the Home and Tribal Affairs Department, NWFP, to transport their arms to Peshawar.

“We did not experience such a situation even when we went to Germany to take part in an exhibition over there,” said Mr Shoaib, while explaining the difficulties he went through in bringing his products for display.

Stringent security measures were taken by the NWFP police and intelligence agencies in and around the place where stalls were set up.

According to a press release issued on Thursday, the chief executive officer of Smeda, Zahid Aziz, and Sultan Tiwana, regional head of Smeda, visited the venue of exhibition.

Talking on the occasion with the exhibitors, Mr Aziz said that the government was committed to expand the role of small and medium enterprises in defence manufacturing sector.